Comments on: Get the Data: Obama’s terror drones

By: Fred

Fred — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:22:09 +0000

In the spirit of the late Karl Hess, when the state goes rogue cut off its money. There are legal ways to reduce your federal taxes- including not earning very much. Structure your investments so taxes are paid to foreign nations not engaged in these atrocities (deductible against US taxes owed) or buy municipal bonds. Or…. sit around like the “good Germans” of the Nazi era and do nothing at all.
Fred

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:17:12 +0000

Whether they are drones, or missiles from war planes, wars bring horrible atrocities by those who engage in them. Here in the U.S. however, we see a totally different view on what we are doing to the rest of the world. In testimony before our lamest Congress in my seven decades on this planet, an established periodical, The Nation, sent their reporter, Jeremy Scahill, to discuss his experiences labeled Secret Wars. Listed in the long line of battles we engage in was an incident in Yemen back in December of 2009 where we sent missiles into Yemen to, http://www.thenation.com/blog/156977/jeremy-scahill-testifies-congress-americas-secret-wars , ostensibly, take out members of Al Qaeda. In the small party of around 40 people that was exterminated, there were 21 small children. All of them were blown to a million pieces and following President Saleh agreed to say that these missiles were Yemen’s and not from the U.S. attack. Patreus reportedly showered Saleh with millions in aid but soon the news came out from Amnesty International: “Amnesty International released photographs from one of the strikes revealing remnants of US cluster munitions and the Tomahawk cruise missiles used to deliver them. At the time, the Pentagon refused to comment, directing all inquiries to Yemen’s government, which released a statement on December 24 taking credit for both airstrikes, saying in a press release, “Yemeni fighter jets launched an aerial assault” and “carried out simultaneous raids killing and detaining militants.”
Rather than accept responsibility, Patreus, presumably, with Obama’s approval, since he immediately promoted Patreus, chose to cover up these atrocities and to this day not a single reporter has asked Obama, or his spokes people, why he chose to cover this atrocity up? Cover-ups are a bad word here in the states and Democrats refuse to mention this one, and Republicans probably approve of the cover-up and the atrocity. Yet even international reporters refuse to question the act. Many here in the states say that “shit happens” and while we are not at war with Yemen, we have decided it’s not a problem bombing anywhere we find a group of Arabs or Muslims who don’t like us. No one dare mention this to Obama for fear, apparently, it will cost him his re-election. Where is the international press in questioning this cover-up and why haven’t you posed this question to the U.S. media to find out what sort of deal has been worked out to stick this under our proverbial rugs?

By: Syed Arbab Ahmed (@SyedArbabAhmed)

Syed Arbab Ahmed (@SyedArbabAhmed) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:49:05 +0000

Drone attacks & what Pakistan has got from “War on terror”?
http://bit.ly/nTHdBF

By: MK Ultra

MK Ultra — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:33:27 +0000

Three cheers for our Nobel Peace Prize laureate!

I would like to think that the day is coming when the US is finally denounced for its crimes against humanity and brought to justice but I won’t hold my breath. The moral compass the entire world is busted and there is no one nation in the world that is better than the next or more justice, less warmongering or more righteous. We’re so doomed!

By: Chris Woods

Chris Woods — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:48:15 +0000

We consulted with Oxford University's Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, and Harvard's Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research for our report, and as their comments make clear this is contested territory. Please also see A Question of Legality.

By: JMS

JMS — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:33:47 +0000

Whilst TBIJ is doing excellent work, it is needlessly reducing its credibility by its choice of legal experts in these reports on drone strikes. The accompanying news story to this data cited an expert who assumed without giving reasons that there was not an armed conflict going on. Actually, given that the Taliban is an organised armed group and fighting is pretty intense between the Taliban and Pakistani forces, it is overwhelmingly likely that the Taliban-Pakistan fighting does qualify under international law as an armed conflict, and Wikileaks suggests that in many of these operations, Pakistan actually asked the US to help it fight the Taliban.

Given that an attack on a funeral would be an obvious violation of principles of distinction and proportionality even in an armed conflict, citing an expert who makes the debatable claim that it is not adds little and makes your research appear more like advocacy than neutral reporting. As for the rescuers, there is some potential for genuinely believing rescuers are Taliban (especially because they do not wear Red Crosses or Crescents to distinguish themselves), but again, many of these attacks bear the hallmarks of failure to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

Your work has uncovered war crimes (serious breaches of proportionality and indiscriminate attacks) already – it isn’t necessary to make the debatable claim that there isn’t an armed conflict.